In the meantime, defense contractors say they are quietly preparing in case there's no deal on the spending threat known as "sequester" or "sequestration."

"The impact on jobs would be significant," Boeing Defense, Space and Security President Dennis Muilenburg said in a visit to Huntsville on Wednesday, "and we've already initiated planning that, if sequester were to happen, we're prepared to continue to drive affordability to stay ahead of those budget reductions."

Translation: Boeing and other defense contractors will do what they have to do to remain profitable. Boeing gave a dramatic example of that in January when it closed an airplane plant in Wichita, Kan., that employed 2,160 people.

"Sequestration" is the Washington term for $492 billion in defense cuts set to start in January. They would be on top of another $487 billion in multi-year cuts also forced on the Pentagon by Congress last year.

Sequestration is the result of a failure by Congress and the White House to agree on a plan to cut the federal deficit more than $1 trillion during the next decade. When a congressional "supercommittee" couldn't find a way to do that, the default budget plan already in place, including sequestration, became law. Now, unless Congress votes to change that law and President Barack Obama agrees not to veto that vote, sequestration starts in January. Right now, the two sides are stalemated.

The Pentagon's strategy to handle the first $487 billion in cuts is "a force that is smaller and leaner, but agile, flexible, ready and technologically advanced," in the words of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in testimony to Congress in late February.

Cutting that first $487 billion will be "tough," "austere" and "serious," to use words thrown about at recent defense conferences. But local leaders believe the military's continued emphasis on advanced technology plays to Huntsville's strengths in the years ahead.

But if sequester starts pulling another $50 billion out of Pentagon spending every year for the coming decade, words like "devastating" begin to be heard.

"Alabama ranks fourth in the nation for defense spending at 8.6 percent of its GDP," according to a briefing paper prepared for a recent Washington trip by the Chamber of Commerce of Huntsville/Madison County.

"About half, or $7 billion, of the state's defense revenue went to contractors and defense personnel at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville/Madison County," the report continued. Huntsville employs 36,000 people who manage more than $100 billion in federal defense spending each year, making the community fifth in the nation for receiving defense money.

Sequestration would lead to cuts not only in jobs and personal incomes here, the chamber said, but that loss of income "directly tracks to reductions in tax revenues affecting schools, roads, public services, housing, etc."

The House Armed Services Committee agrees. "The 10 states that will feel the largest pain as a percentage of the state economy," a recent committee forecast said, "are Virginia, Connecticut, Alabama, Arizona, Maryland, Alaska, Hawaii, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and Missouri."

How would sequestration work? No one is sure. U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Huntsville, said he has seen scenarios ranging from 700,000 defense layoffs nationwide to 8-14 percent spending cuts "across the board" in defense budgets.

A House Armed Services Committee analysis lists several major weapons systems threatened by sequestration, but only one with direct and substantial Alabama connections. And it isn't in Huntsville.

The Navy's new littoral combat ships, some of which are being built in Mobile, face "termination" under sequestration, the committee analysis said.

Defense Secretary Panetta warned Congress that cuts in defense spending will affect not just the top 10 states, but all 50 states. Panetta said sequestration will create "unacceptably high" risks to the nation's security.

Given that analysis, how likely is it that Congress and the White House will allow sequestration to happen? Not very likely, most observers agree, because neither party will want the blame, if for no other reason.

Alabama's two Republican U.S. senators, Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions, told the chamber of commerce group not to "despair," in Shelby's words.

Sessions believes a one-year reprieve will pass this year to prevent sequestration for at least another 12 months. The way to do that without repealing the act is to "buy down" the cost of one year's sequestration - $55 billion - with cuts elsewhere.

Bills to buy down a year of sequestration are floating in both the House and Senate, but an unexpected clash between defense hawks and budget hawks is making their path a little bumpier.

U.S. Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, has a bill to delay sequestration for a year. But according to the Congressional Quarterly in April, he has only 72 co-sponsors from 242 Republicans in the House, and only nine of 47 Republicans in the Senate have signed on to a companion bill.

One of the House sponsors is Brooks, who represents Huntsville and Alabama's 5th Congressional District. He's is a definite deficit hawk, but Brooks said Friday that defense has to remain a national priority.

Brooks believes the most likely scenario is no deal this year. In January, perhaps before the president and Congress are sworn in, the Pentagon announces 8-14 percent cuts across the board. When the effects of that become clear, Brooks said, public opinion will force a solution.

In the meantime, sequestration is a strange threat. For committees such as the House Armed Services Committee, which have to plan budgets now, it's real and scary. For defense companies, it's real, too, but there's still time to stop it.

For communities like Huntsville, it's a threat, but not yet a specific threat.

"There isn't a plan on the table we have to fight," Mike Ward, vice president of governmental affairs for the chamber of commerce, said Thursday. "There's no current proposal we have to respond to."

Ward was explaining why the city hasn't formed a "Save Redstone" task force similar to the one formed two years ago when NASA funding was under direct White House attack.

"Congress still has a tremendous ability to correct the situation," Ward said.